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From lawyer/chefs to surgeon/playwrights and mom/CEOs, today’s most fulfilling lives are the ones filled with slashes. One Person/Multiple Careers is essential reading for anyone who is loathe to answer “What do you do?” with a singular definition.

“Marci Alboher is the Walt Whitman of the new world of work.” – Daniel H. Pink, author of  Drive, A Whole New Mind and Free Agent Nation

“This groundbreaking book explains a future that’s already arrived.” – Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project

Read more about the book.   Buy the book today.

There’s some overlap between the two scenarios because in both cases you are taking what feels like a standard tool and tailoring it to fit your needs. And the good news is that when you spend a little time with it, LinkedIn allows for a lot of customizing.

Here are a few ideas: {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

But unlike most journalists who are panicking about what they’d do next if they lost a steady paycheck, I quickly replaced that work with high quality work that I enjoy–coaching other writers, teaching, and public speaking. As an experienced freelancer, I also knew how to find writing opportunities even in a shrinking market. {Read the rest at Yahoo!}

Here’s the post:

Having just published a book about people with multiple professional identities, you’d think I’d have been prepared for all the identity shifts in moving from journalist to journalist/author.

I was not. If it were just about changing the wrappers the words are delivered in and the volume of those words, the evolution would be natural.

The bigger adjustment was the move from member of the media to one hoping to get noticed by the likes of us. Overnight I became a possible story, a news hook, an explainer, a profile subject — the very things I look for when working on my own articles or chapters on deadline. Which meant, really, that I had to learn how to be my own publicist (this is true regardless of the level of publicity support an author brings to the project.)

Because I am familiar with the media, I tend to do a lot of outreach on my own. Figuring out how to write pitches and whom to get them to came easily. But getting the media’s attention — even when I know just what they are looking for — is anything but easy. Sometimes an editor or producer bites quickly, when I imagine I’ll need to persuade. In other cases, a sure thing goes nowhere.

Then there is the delicate dance we journalist/authors must play in approaching our professional contacts in the media. The very people we consider colleagues are the ones who could be covering us now as a subject. I still can’t claim to have mastered the steps, except to say that it must be done carefully. Suggesting a story or asking for a contact seems okay. Persistent follow-up (a good trait in a publicist) seems out of line.

I now understand the frustration of publicists who see the relevance of their subject to a story in progress, only to be ignored by the members of the media they are trying to reach. And I certainly understand the helplessness that sources feel when being interviewed.

With each interview, I itch to take the control, suggest the angle, ask the reporter where the story is going, or recommend more sources. Once the interview is over, I’m restless to see if the reporter got it right, and of course, how I sounded or looked. I now know what it’s like to read a story only to notice how one quote fit in (my own) without wondering too much if the reporter did a good job on the subject as a whole. Still, I force myself to take another look, as a journalist, to make sure I’m being objective.

Occasionally, I am surprised that a reporter seems to understand my book — or how it fit into a story — in a way that I hadn’t even thought of.

Standing in the shoes of the many sources I have interviewed over the years should leave me with some good lessons for when I’m back on the other side of the media game.

I’m still a work in progress, as most people are when they inhabit new identities.

Then I stumbled onto an interesting program in Michigan, where Oakland Community College is partnering with S3 Entertainment Group to train laid off workers for new careers in the film industry. That program intrigued me so much that I abandoned my original story idea and just wrote about that.  If you missed it in yesterday’s New York Times, read it here: “A Hollywood Sequel for Michigans Workers.”

I’ll likely get back to that original story idea, so if you know someone doing something creative to finance a career transition, let me know.

I hadn’t planned to post another “Where Are They Now” interview so soon, but then I learned that Oscar Smith played a role in the recent rescue efforts for the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River on January 15. I had to talk to him.

Oscar divides his time between working at his Tribeca gym, O-Diesel, and his job on the “scuba rescue” team of The New York City Police Department. I first wrote about Oscar for my book; later, I profiled him for this blog since he was making some changes to his career. 

These days Oscar is shifting again. He is downsizing his gym business because he has been feeling the strain of managing two full-time careers. I spent some time with Oscar this weekend, hearing about his experience working on the rescue and recovery mission.

Click below to listen to Oscar’s account of his experience that day (recorded and produced by my friend and colleague Barbara Raab).

Author insert a music with WS Audio Player.
Download ( Oscar's Story).

As background, the producers sent me this interesting article from Slate.com by Daniel Gross. According to the article, though the unemployment rate might not be as low as it was, say, in 2003, those numbers might not tell the whole story since neither the unemployment rate nor the payroll jobs figures captures “people who work part-time because they can’t find — or their employer can’t provide — full-time work” or “people who have left the work force entirely.”

Way back in the pre-recession days of 2006-2007, I was encouraging people to cultivate slash careers (journalist/author/speaker/writing coach) as a way to spice up a career or provide some balance. It is now clear that many of us (myself included), will be slashing by necessity.  In the past week alone, I have had at least five conversations with friends or colleagues who told me they are taking on projects they might have turned down when they were feeling more flush.

So if you suddenly find yourself with more time and less work, what are some of the ways you can start laying the foundation for a slash that will bring in extra income and carry you through difficult economic times?

• Take inventory of your interests and talents to figure out where your strengths lie and to get ideas for paths you might pursue.
• Use the time for re-education. Thanks to a boom in adult education and a proliferation of online offerings, it is easier than ever to get training for many career transitions.
• If the work you do lends itself to freelance or consulting work, offer your services to clients in addition to your employer. Read Michelle Goodman’s books and blog for spot-on advice on the freelance life. At the beginning, consider offer your services for free to get some exposure.
• Just as we all wish we had diversified our investment portfolios, think about how you can diversify our career portfolio so that if one employer runs into trouble, you have other potential income streams. Emily Morgan, a virtual assistant who began her business out of her home to be near her young son, is a terrific example of this.
• Explore online job sites, like Needlestackjobs.com and On-Ramps, which cater to flexible and part-time work. (I’m trying to assemble a list of reputable sites that are valuable for part-time and flexible schedule work. Anyone have any good recommendations here? If so, please share in the comments.)
• Don’t hide.  If you are unwilling to let your network know what you need, you are shutting yourself out of opportunities. Yesterday, someone I follow on Twitter ran this “ad” for her husband who is looking for work.  Smart move.
• Expect that your transition will take some time, potentially a long time. And understand that you might have to take stop-gap work until you craft the exact slash mix you are hoping for.

If you have some good advice about how you’ve set up a slash career in order to generate extra income, please comment.

Norway’s leading business publication, Dagens Næringsliv (The Norwegian Business Daily), recently ran a lengthy feature on slash careers.

Check out the beautiful spread here: Generation Slash

February 2007
Contact: Tanisha Christie, Publicist
212.364.1260 – tanisha.christie@hbgusa.com
 

“Marci Alboher is the Walt Whitman of the new world of work.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and Free Agent Nation

“First there were yuppies, then DINKs (double income, no kids). Now there are slashes.”
—The Kansas City Star

Imagine if your work allowed you to use all your talents and pursue all your interests — not just the ones that pay your rent, but also the ones that float your boat. Sounds impossible right? It isn’t, as many successful men and women can now attest.

ONE PERSON/MULTIPLE CAREERS: A New Model For Work/Life Success by Marci Alboher (February 23, 2007/$14.99) charts a new path to career satisfaction: becoming a “slash.” Be they lawyer/ministers, recruiter/innkeepers, or CEO/moms, the true winners in today’s workplace are those who cultivate multiple passions, talents and income streams to create satisfying work lives. Celebrities like Bono and P. Diddy — with their boundary crossing reinventions — are emblematic of this new way to think about a career.

ONE PERSON/MULTIPLE CAREERS is the product of hundreds of in-depth interviews with people who have built fulfilling slash lives in the modern world of work. Blending compelling stories and real-world advice, this guide includes:

• Tricks for seamlessly acquiring new skills while managing an existing career
• Tips for better tackling time management
• Innovative ideas for creating business cards, resumes and websites that properly portray a slash-filled life
• Secrets for creating and capitalizing on the synergies that exist between seemingly unrelated careers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marci Alboher is a journalist/author/speaker who lives the “/” life. A former corporate lawyer, Marci is a regular contributor to The New York Times and other national publications where she writes about workplace issues, entrepreneurship, and travel. Marci leads nonfiction writing workshops at the JCC of Manhattan, the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd St. Y, and other venues. She is also a private writing coach and sought after speaker on workplace issues and careers in nonfiction writing. For more information about Marci, visit www.heymarci.com.

Marci Alboher wrote a book, in part because “my lawyer friends were saying, I’d love this job a whole lot more if I didn’t have to be at it all the time.”

Thus was born One Person/Multiple Careers, subtitled “How ‘The Slash Effect’ Can Work for You.” It chronicles the experiences of attorneys and others who have added outside interests to their careers, and offers practical tips on how to succeed as a multi-professional.

A lawyer herself who lives in Manhattan, Ms. Alboher was inspired by author and sociologist Gail Sheehy, whose lines from “New Passages” serve as philosophical introduction for “One Person”:

A single fixed identity is a liability today. It only makes people more vulnerable to sudden changes in economic conditions. . . . [D]eveloping multiple identities is one of the best buffers we can erect against mental and physical illness.

Accordingly, Ms. Alboher suggests that lawyers becomes “slashes,” as in lawyer/actor or lawyer/entrepreneur or lawyer/filmmaker – or, like herself and others, lawyer/writer.

Bottom line, she contends in her book, lawyers who manage to incorporate other professional interests “seem more satisfied with their careers – and less oppressed by them – than those who hold just one job.”

For example, the book recounts the experience of Joel Zighelboim, a 37-year-old former associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett “on the very path to which many young lawyers from elite schools aspire” with financial security assured if only he would “log grueling hours and continue to be a star performer.”

The promise did nothing to relax Mr. Zighelboim. To the contrary, wrote Ms. Alboher, “it showed him that everything was wrong.”

Mr. Zieghelboim took a three-month leave of absence from Simpson Thacher and enrolled in a digital filmmaking course, culminating in a 30-minute comic documentary about “bourgeois New York parents’ obsession with the newest must-have accessory, the Bugaboo stroller.”

Mr. Ziegelboim chose not to return to his firm. Instead, he took a judicial clerkship, which he subsequently left to open a wine and tapas bar in Greenwich Village. He considers himself a happily-ever-after slash.

Ms. Alboher, who describes herself as an author/speaker/coach is careful not to recommend that all lawyers quit the profession.

As a life coach, she said, “The first thing I tell lawyers is to figure out whether they’re dissatisfied with the profession, or the way they’re practicing it” before abandoning the law altogether.

“One of the wonderful things about law is that it’s virtual, portable and flexible,” she added. “Lawyers don’t have to be physically tied to their work.”

There is flexibility galore at Axiom Legal, a lawyer placement agency in SoHo featured in Ms. Alboher’s book. At Axiom, the first questions lawyer applicants are asked are, “How many hours would you like to work?” and “Where would you like to work from?”

“Some lawyers work the equivalent of a full-time job for awhile and then take a number of months off to immerse in another commitment,” Ms. Alboher wrote. “Others work a regular three-day-a-week schedule for months at a time. There is no standard.”

Ms. Alboher practiced advertising law for nine years, mostly as in-house counsel at Reader’s Digest, first at the magazine’s headquarters in Westchester County and then in Hong Kong, where she kept an e-mail log of her impressions abroad.

“I got really committed to it, and a lot of my readers were journalists who said I ought to really do something with it,” said Ms. Alboher in a telephone interview from Denver, where she is touring with her book. “I thought I might become a travel writer, but instead I began writing about the law.”

The venture became her weekly column, “Shifting Careers,” published on the Web site of The New York Times.

“I left the law itself because I’d got into a really narrow specialty,” said Ms. Alboher. “It got to the point where it was easier to make a career outside the law than to reinvent myself within the law. Plus, I had this itch to write.”

The book’s final bit of counsel underscores the firm belief of all slash lawyers interviewed:

“[W]ho can answer the question, ‘What do you do?’ with a singular response?” wrote Ms. Alboher. “And why would we want to?”

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